Fuel Up

Every industry and profession in the world has conferences. If you are in a licensed profession then chances are that you have to attend conferences, classes, and seminars to maintain your certification. For the rest of us, a conference is a vital part of staying ahead of the curve.

A conference of any kind is only has good as you make it. A well-run conference will have an agenda that is timely, informative, and on topic with current trends and advancements. If you attend these sessions then you should walk away with new ideas that can not only help your company but will help you with your career advancement. If you feel like you are in a rut, then go to a conference and re-charge your creative batteries.

Networking

Networking is always a big part of any conference. It’s not just about hanging with friends and business partners. It’s about meeting new people. It’s about sharing ideas. When you have an opportunity to talk face-to-face you will find that many of your colleagues have the same issues. You have a relaxed setting to share these issues and ideas.

You could also use a conference to pitch new business and maintain current clients. If you plan accordingly you can “kill two birds with one stone”. You can save travel expenses by getting several face-to-face meetings at one conference.

EAMC 2009 at Colorado Springs

The Event and Arena Marketing Conference is coming up June 10th thru June 13th in Colorado Springs. carbonhouse is a sponsor of the conference. We sponsor this for two reasons: 1) we want to expose and market our product to this industry. 2) We want to learn as much as possible about the industry. We need to stay as up-to-speed as you do. We need to hear from our current clients and potential clients. We take this info back to the office where we can create new products that the event and entertainment industry needs to market in the 21st Century.

We hope you will join us at this year’s conference. We plan to be part of a panel session discussing online sales & marketing. We also will host a breakout presentation on what we can do for you. If you see us at the bar, tell us you read this blog and we will buy you a drink. Cheers!

EAMC 2009 Registration

Author: James Sack

The cobbler’s kids.

It is always a tough task creating a website for your own company. We do this all the time for our clients, but as a creative shop we always want to be…well…creative. After many iterations, we decided the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach was best. Get all the good stuff out and available and keep the fluff to a minimum. Really, the problem we were facing was not the look of the site, but the delivery of content.

With that in mind and a blank slate, simplicity became the main goal in the new direction for carbonhouse.com. Building off one of our product sites, venuelements.com, we wanted to keep it uncomplicated, clean and clear, and allow the work to speak for itself. We relied on the typography to create the space, but also improve usability, by providing quick access to all the pertinent information (the good stuff). Taking the single page site concept and amping it up, we used the mootools framework to dynamically deliver the content from our greenhouse content management system and create transitions that aren’t just fluff. These transitions ensure the correct flow of the content to the user and communicate our message.

Design

• Clean, uncluttered design to communicate and focus on work and let the interaction via javascript provide the ‘bling’ or motion
• Single-page format to allow visitors quick access to pertinent information and messaging
• Object-oriented approach to home page spotlight area that showcases recent projects in a less traditional, more unexpected way
• Utilization of sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to present titles and headers in Helvetica Neue Light, which offers a more sophisticated look than the standardized web font palette.

Technical (all the techy goodness)

• A degradable javascript navigation for users with javascript-disabled browsers allows the site to be navigated while also providing search engine-friendly standard hrefs for our links.
• We utilize AJAX calls with the mootools framework to load page content and project details from our greenhouse CMS, thus avoiding page reload.

Accessibility Benefits

Overall, there are a lot of different ways to handle navigation. By incorporating the degradable javascript within our navigation, we have reduced the possibility of viewers not seeing the site as intended, while increasing the ability of Google and other search engines to find our links.

Author: Taylor Nall

Statistics published on Facebook.com show more than 150 million active users and more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide) with the fastest growing demographic being 30 years and older. The average user has 100 friends on the site and more than 20 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month. <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>

“PR plus word-of-mouth equals marketing’s new power couple.”

—Andrea C. Wojnicki, Rotman School of Management

One of the leading gurus of word-of-mouth marketing, Dave Balter of marketing firm BzzAgent, is out with a new book: The Word Of Mouth Manual, Volume II. The book, which costs $45 at Amazon, can also be downloaded for free in PDF format from a bunch of other smart marketers that Balter reached out to, including Todd Deffren of PR-Squared, Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures and Jason Fried of 37 Signals. See the whole list of resources here.

Now a note of fair warning: I am a registered BzzAgent myself, and Dave sent me a free copy of the new book (along with a previous book he wrote) for signing up to help him promote the book. That’s smart—and that is just what BzzAgent does. Also, I haven’t read the book yet but eagerly look forward to it. Because let’s face it–everyone wants to generate better word-of-mouth marketing, but few really know what it is or how to go about it.

carbonhouse was fortunate to have one of Dave’s top notch colleagues, Joe Chernov (BzzAgent VP Communications), stop by our office recently. He was in town to give a talk to an PR group on the whole subject of WOM. The following are excerpts from Joe’s talk, which no doubt are expanded upon in Dave’s book.

“PR plus word-of-mouth equals marketing’s new power couple.”—Andrea C. Wojnicki, Rotman School of Management

First, WOM often gets confused with viral marketing. The key WOM rules, Joe said, are:

1. Don’t sacrifice your brand for entertainment.
2. Pick the right medium.

The medium is truly a significant issue. For example, with Consumer Generated Media (CGM), consumers will do what they want with your brand, and you might not like the results. Think about homemade YouTube ads, for instance. Be careful what you ask for.

When considering “buzz marketing” reminder first that it is typically an event designed to get people talking, like the time Oprah gave away a bunch of free cars. Unfortunately, that incident backfired (no pun intended), when sales at Pontiac (the giver) tanked, and the tax man bit the receivers, some of whom couldn’t afford the “free” car. Another buzz marketing example Joe cited was Starbucks closing most of its stores recently, for an afternoon, to retrain and invigorate its baristas. It made for some good press (”we care of our customers enough to close down and lose money” message), along with some lampooning on the flip side of the coin.

Another thing to keep in mind: “buzz” does not always translate into successful WOM. Sometimes buzz just creates a blip—like the examples above, which are essentially “PR stunts.”

Shilling is an evil cousin of buzz marketing, and to be avoided at all costs. If you’re lying, tricking, hiding, cheating or misleading—you’re shilling and setting yourself up for potential disaster.

WOM, on the other hand, is about sharing honest opinions between two or more people. WOM is ALWAYS open, honest and authentic and NEVER scripted, paid for or stealthy.

According to Joe (via Media Edge stats), 76% of purchasing decisions come from WOM. Therefore, it’s critical to understand it, plan for it and implement it well.

So what are some tips to doing WOM the right way, from the BzzAgent playbook? Here are just a few nuggets that make me anxious to dive into Dave’s book for deeper insights.

• Be outlandish. An example can be an ad campaign that is a little shocking or at least thought-provoking.
• Help tell stories. People respond to messages that resonate with the “running autobiography” of their lives.
• Listen. Listen first, then respond to, your customers.
• Polarize. Embrace differing opinions and encourage debate and dialogue.
• Impose rationing. In other words, scarity can be a good thing. It drives up intrigue, interest and demand.
• Create experiences. Birds of a feather indeed flock together, so figure out how to facilitate memorable interactions.
• Use WOM as media. This is the BzzAgent model, where they have over 400,000 people willing to evangelize for their customers’ products or services—saying whatever they really think (good, bad or indifferent)—but spreading the word nonetheless.

The following is a transcript of our conversation.

Brandon Uttley (BU): You have been involved in all facets of the marketing equation: client side, agency side, media and of course teaching. Besides the teaching part, which of the others did you most enjoy and why?

Bob Lauterborn (BL): My first job was selling space for the Syracuse Herald newspapers and while it was invaluable training (everyone who gets a chance should take a selling job, for the experience and for the credibility in the field it gives you later), I also learned that I wasn’t cut out to be a salesman. Oh, I managed to do well enough, but I hated having to explain over and over again things that seemed obvious to me, I hated having to pussyfoot around fragile egos and I learned that I didn’t suffer fools well, I’m afraid.

My early GE jobs were as a writer — an advertising copywriter, a speechwriter, and a writer/producer/director of industrial theater, events and what we’d now call multi-media presentations. I was better at that, and I liked the work. I especially liked the variety of businesses I got exposed to, from appliances to atomic energy, steel mill motors to military electronic systems — GE was in nearly all of the basic SIC codes. My last GE job was the most rewarding, though: I was creative director for the company’s 400-person in-house agency. What I learned was that I got much more of a kick out of helping the writers and art directors who worked with me to do great work than I did when I did it myself. (Kind of presages the future, doesn’t it, although of course I didn’t know it at the time.)

I left GE only because one of my mentors became Chairman and CEO of International Paper and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. There I became the client for all marketing communications and corporate advertising, dealing with the agencies and the media people — most of whose jobs I understood exceptionally well, because I’d done them. I loved that job, too, for similar reasons. My management mantra was that I wanted to create an environment in which all of the people who worked with us and for us could do the best work of their lives every day they came to work. Funniest thing — everybody wanted to work with us and they did do terrific work!

A parallel that occurred to me: I’d done a lot of community theater; I’d acted in dozens of plays and musicals and I’d directed 13 productions, including three originals. I discovered that I like directing better than acting, because as an actor I had limited influence but as a director I could make the play come to life as I believed the author intended. That’s a little like being the client managing the development of all the integrated elements in a campaign versus being one of the creatives producing an ad or some other piece of the whole.

BU: You worked for some big companies (GE and International Paper, among others) in a time when loyalty mattered–both to the individual and the company. What has advertising/marketing lost (or gained) with the rise of the “free agent” trend in our society, where companies don’t really protect your job and workers consequently go to the highest bidder (or do the work themselves)?

BL: After I’d gone through the fabulous GE training program and had been with the company about three years, my boss did a literal “laying on of hands.” “Son,” he said, “You will have a job with this company as long as this company has a job that interests you.” And he meant it.

Flash forward 25 years and there’s GE’s then-Chairman and CEO Jack Welch being quoted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal saying, “Loyalty to a company is bull****.” GE really had felt like a family when I was there, but Welch didn’t get his “Neutron Jack” nickname for nothing! It was still an exciting place to work and one of the world’s best “management academies,” but the environment certainly didn’t sound very family-friendly anymore.

Here’s what I think companies and agencies lose when they develop a hard-nosed culture. When I was there GE had a ten-person market research team, led by a veritable guru named Herb Krugman. Herb was a leader in the research field, very much involved with his top-tier counterparts who were developing new methods and approaches. Everytime Herb learned something, he thought, “How can I apply that in GE?” In his drive to cut headcount, Jack eliminated the research department and with his generous settlement, Herb started his own research practice. GE was still his most important client, but here’s the difference: Now when he learned something, he said to himself, “Which of my clients can I sell that to?” It wasn’t always GE. So Jack might have saved a little money, but who knows what that trnsferred loyalty might have cost the company?

BU: You helped pioneer the concept of integrated marketing communications (IMC). We talked about how your book initially came out in the mid-90s, right before the advent of the web. In your opinion, how has the web changed the landscape of IMC?

BL: I’m very disappointed in how IMC has morphed from the strategic thinking process we intended to a tactical one-from-Column A, two-from-Column B Chinese menu media planning process — in fact, I’m right now writing a new book “IMC 2.0″ to get it back on track. So I’m a little leery of talking about IMC from the standpoint of any one medium. But the web — just becoming a teenager this year — is special, in that it really does give us at least the theoretical potential of doing 1:1 marketing.

We had always said that IMC was a dialogue in contrast to the old mass media model monologue, but the opportunities to actually conduct a dialogue were limited before the internet. It is a vital component in virtually any IMC plan, assuming the person whose behavior you want to impact is connected, which just about everybody is now.

BU: From your teaching experiences, how do you feel students are being prepared to deal with the constant introduction of new technologies and the shift in power from companies to consumers?

BL: Students kind of instinctively know the deal — after all, they’re driving it. What I seriously doubt is that many of the people they’re going to go to work for have fully comprehended the shift and its implications. That’s why I describe my students as little time bombs — I prime them and launch them and five years later they go off! One of my former students said she perceived my mission as “to change the advertising world one student at a time.” I love that. Maybe that’s what I’d like carved on my tombstone!

BU: Thank you again for your time and wisdom!

BL: Thank you for giving me the opportunity!

Robert F. Lauterborn is retiring as the James L. Knight Professor of Advertising in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a distinguished chair made possible by a million-dollar grant from the Knight Foundation “to improve the teaching of advertising.” He has held the position since 1986.

Professor Lauterborn is widely recognized as an influential figure in the study of advertising. In 1999, he was presented with the G. D. Crain, Jr. Award (named after the founder of Advertising Age) for “lifetime contributions to the development and improvement of business marketing,” and inducted into the Business Marketing Hall of Fame.

Professor Lauterborn is perhaps best known as one of the pioneers of Integrated Marketing Communication. He co-authored the best-selling book Integrated Marketing Communication: Pulling It Together And Making It Work, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and a second book titled “The New Marketing Paradigm.” In a 2001 survey among U.S. academics and agency and client-side practitioners, the IMC book was ranked 14th all-time among books influencing the study of advertising, and number one among books written since 1986.